push: can't upload single files to second remote without pushing data from other remotes as well

Bug Report

push: can’t upload single files to second remote without pushing data from other remotes as well

Description

I’m working with multiple remotes within the same Git repository. To logically separate my data, I’m using the following config (without a set default remote):

['remote "campaigns"']
    url = azure://my-campaigns/campaign-xy
    account_name = <my-account-name>
    exclude_environment_credential = True
    exclude_visual_studio_code_credential = True
    exclude_managed_identity_credential = True
    exclude_shared_token_cache_credential = True

['remote "user-scores"']
    url = azure://my-users/scores
    account_name = <my-account-name>
    exclude_environment_credential = True
    exclude_visual_studio_code_credential = True
    exclude_managed_identity_credential = True
    exclude_shared_token_cache_credential = True

Assuming the following project structure:

|-- .dvc/
|-- data/
     |---- raw/
            |---- campaign.csv
            |---- campaign.csv.dvc
            |---- scores.csv
            |---- scores.csv.dvc

My problem is, that every time I want to dvc push -r user-scores, all files I previously pushed to the campaigns remote will also be uploaded to user-scores.

Reproduce

1. dvc add data/raw/campaign.csv
2. dvc push -r campaigns
3. dvc add data/raw/scores.csv
4. dvc push -r user-scores

Expected

The campaigns.csv should not be uploaded to the user-scores remote.

Environment information

I’m working on Azure with dvc 2.26.2.

Thanks for any help relating my issues.

[pmrowla]

@meierale I moved your question into a new feature request. Currently, remote: must be specified manually and not via the CLI flags, as you noted we would have to work out a way to remove any potential confusion between setting remote: and passing a remote name to be used with --to-remote.

[pmrowla]

You can also use the remote: field in the outs section of .dvc files to specify where a particular DVC-tracked file or directory should be pushed/pulled from. https://dvc.org/doc/user-guide/project-structure/dvc-files#output-entries

So in your case you could add remote: campaigns in campaigns.csv.dvc and remote: user-scores in scores.csv.dvc. You would then just run dvc push/dvc pull without using -r to specify a remote and without needing to specify individual target files to push/pull.

The one thing to note here would be that you will have to manually add the remote: field in all of your .dvc files.